I understand we're supposed to hate it but I don't and would like a new bike with such. A Trek y or a Klein Mantra. Or a Rocky Mtn. They all are out of production so… who's still making a decent URT bike?

"decent URT bike"

Oxymoron.

GB

Well, it's like "Irish Summer" or "Reasonable Politician".

lots of halford specials are URT but i doubt you'll find a decent one. its a design thats been scrapped for fairly good reasons

Isn't GT I drive about as near as you get now? Yes, I know it's not a URT.

By the way, are you looking for low pivot URT like the Y-Glide or High pivot like the Matra? Both were designed to do different things.

it looks like a URT to me

I had a Trek and always wanted a Klein. I want either for general riding along not hard-core mountain biking. I would probably end up singlespeeding it anyway.
Oh, I have access to an i-Drive mk.1, ok but too fancyful.

Maverick isn't a URT – there's a pivot between the BB and rear axle.

There were the Mantras, Trek Y bikes (plus Fisher equivalent).

And, er….

GB

Maverick, i-drive, mongoose: all semi URT and thus semi crap 😛

If you want a URT, why not just get a suspension seatpost – same effect.

For that matter, the BB on the Maverick isn't on the main triangle either.

Mongooses (Mongeese?) have something close-ish to URT

Mongoose's take on the i-Drive is cool but not wanted. Anybody remembers Rocky Mountain using URT? It was perfect – niche, expensive, looked good, well.. -ish-ish)

Maverick, i-drive, mongoose: all semi URT and thus semi crap

what didn't you like about the Maverick you've had experience of riding off road?

RM Pipeline – was an attempt an an AM bike. FAIL.

Ibis Szazbo as well – same idea as a Mantra.

GB

You know how UHT milk is not as nice as real milk?

Well, the same thing applies to URT suspension.

Thanks, Gee. Now, who owns one and wants me to take her home?

Get an old Trek Y Bike…. I have seen them go VERY cheap on Fleabay! I had a Y-22 years ago and once I had my riding style sorted it was great! Actually come to think of it I was a lot faster back then as well

Kona A must be about the closest you can get now

I've ridden an A for some years and sold it last year for silly money.

Trek Y-50 with the Hawaii paint job and full XTR has to be the one to get. Still FAIL though.

The Fisher was called a Joshua.

GB

So, you want a bike that's squidgy when you sit down and not-squidgy when you don't. Suspension seatpost on a hardtail?

Hmmm, suspension that slightly stiffens up automatically when you stand up and mash the pedals up a hill. Whats not to like?

SSP

They're not the same as a sus seatpost though I can see how you'd think that if you didn't really understand suspension 🙂

The problem is that depending on design they stiffen when you get out of the saddle – some do more than others. Ditto bobbing when pedalling unless you slow the shock down.

I have a Mantra fwiw. I also have two more modern full sussers which are definitely better suspension bikes though the Mantra is great under power when out of the saddle eg rides like a hardtail

I owned a Mantra for a bit – biggest letdown ever. I always wanted one, finally got one, then…

It was terrifying. Whenever you rode through a whoop, the suspension compressed, the head angle slackened and the steering went very, very slow. When you rode over a dropoff, the suspension fully extended, the head angle steepened and the steering went very, very quick. Just what you need…

But, SSP, what about when you want to hammer downhill out of the saddle and the suspension doesn't work…?

I'll stick to a hardtail, at least it knows what sorta bike it is.

(Souce: I used to have a 1998 Kona King Kikapu that was AMAZING when I was sat down but pants when I stood up. Many bikes later I had 2005 SJ FSR 120 which was truly brilliant suspension. Ah…)

(It didn't make a very good DH bike…)

Niche enough? Worra piece of crap.

Coogan, that looks purrfect, makes my legs weaken. Me want now!

Oh yes! I'm sure we're all begging for a "Show us yer orange URT bikes" thread!

😈

Are slingshot still going? I think they were URT off the top of my head.

Looks like they are.

Now, who owns one and wants me to take her home?

My god I think he's serious….

If you are, I may have the bike for you.
Let's talk..
But not here. It's too……. public…..

I am serious, seriously.
My email's as per profile, in all seriousness.

I think he might be serious!

How about a blue one then?

http://www.trailguru.com/wiki/images/2/2c/Clubber-20091212-100615.jpg%5B/Img%5D

Yeah, lovely! I really want one!

The thing about URTs is that they just don't work. They came about as a result of designers trying to stop chain activated suspension action that badly affected early FS bikes. They sort of cured that sure enough, but you end up with a bike with a pivot between two of the three contact points – Hands and feet. So, when standing, not only are your feet and any weight on them part of the unsprung mass of the bike, but you actually have a pivot in the middle of the frame over which you have no control and the shock stands no chance of controlling due to the aforementioned massive increase in unsprung weight. If, when you're seated, the shock is correctly sprung and damped, as soon as you stand you change the sprung/unsprung weight ratio, and the shock simply cannot cope.
The Holy Grail of efficient suspenstion is low unsprung weight and a comparitively stiff chassis. This applied to any wheeled vehicle. URTs are simply (and I choose my words very carefully here) complete shit. They are an evolutionary backwater that was tried, failed, and led to nothing. Unlike, say, single pivots which started out crap and have been refined to the Nth degree until they work superbly. The basic concept of a URT is, and always will be, just plain wrong. This is why they died. Fact.

PP you're pretty much right but equally your statements are more from motorbikes which don't have the issues of power delivery that proper bikes do. Mtbers will sometimes be willing to compromise suspension performance for better power delivery – propedal does exactly that no matter how
much the marketeers would like you to believe otherwise.

URTs are massively compromised suspension designs especially nowadays but equally for some applications (eg ss full sus) they actually work quite well. Fwiw the unstrung weight thing isn't so simple anyway as the bb's distance from the pivot entirely affects how much effective unstrung weight there actually is plus it's not static unsprung weight (since you move your body weight around) which further complicates it.

Old tech, superceeded and so on? Definitely. Completely sh!t? No but you do have to adjust for the problems inherent with it.

I stand by my view. URTs solved one problem the other designs had in their early days and created two that none of them had. And since then, refinement if the other designs has removed or reduced said problem to an acceptable level. There is simply no place for URTs any more, hence their death.

Unsprung weight will be more important on an MTB too, being as your body weight us FAR more than the bike alone ( unlike a motorbike) and that's what you're transferring…..

I well remember even the mag reviews at the time saying they were severely compromised……

Agreed, no place for them nowadays but that in itself doesn't make them sh!t – just heavily compromised in comparison as we seem to agree on…

Unsprung weight – yes, it's important of course but as I said for URTs it's just not as simple as saying that because the rider's weight is applied to the unsprung section of the frame that it's the same as having a single pivot with a swingarm whose weight is similar to that of a rider

The effective unsprung weight on URTs is largely about how much the suspension movement moves the BB vertically upwards since weight is the 'unsprung' mass rather than a fixed suspension structure. If there was no/very little vertical movement (eg a pivot right above the BB and just behind it then the unsprung weight from the rider would be next to nothing… Moments of inertia and all that…

Going back to Mavericks/etc rider weight still does affect the suspension but the design means that the effect is small and insignificant – just like the scenario I described above.